MISSION AND SCIENCE PLANNING

Apollo at the End of 1966

By the time 1966 drew to a close the Apollo spacecraft and Saturn launch
vehicle projects had been through some rough times. The lunar landing
craft, under contract to Grumman Aircraft Engineering Company of
Bethpage, New York, was slow to reach design maturity and Grumman had
considerable difficulty with the main propulsion engines, landing gear,
and radar systems. Across the country in southern California, North
American Aviation's Space & Information Division had its own set of
problems with the command and service module.59

North American had other problems as well, notably with the S-II second
stage of the mammoth Saturn V launch vehicle. The S-II was similar to
Saturn V's third stage (the S-IVB) in that it used cryogenic propellants
(liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen at extremely low temperatures), but
it was much larger and presented more difficult manufacturing
problems.60 Besides, North American
lacked the experience that the S-IVB stage contractor, Douglas Aircraft
Company, could draw on from its prior development of the smaller S-IV
stage of Saturn I. In 1965 North American's troubles in managing its two
programs - especially the S-II - were the most serious obstacle to
achieving the end-of-the-decade goal for Apollo. During 1965 the
company's handling of its Apollo and Saturn contracts drew extraordinary
attention from Headquarters and from Marshall Space Flight Center,
culminating in a top-to-bottom evaluation of NAA's program by teams of
NASA experts. In December Maj. Gen. Samuel C. Phillips, Apollo program
manager at Headquarters, sent a devastating critique of NAA's program
management to his bosses and to the company's executives.61

The overall picture for manned space flight was not bleak, however.
During 1965-66 the Gemini program had built a solid foundation for
operations, sending missions into earth orbit at an average of one every
two months. Important questions about the human ability to function in
zero gravity were settled. Rendezvous was demonstrated in so many ways
it seemed strange that anyone had ever doubted it was feasible. Saturn
and Apollo enjoyed some successes as well. Marshall Space Flight Center
proved out the Saturn I and IB launch vehicles - important junior
partners to Saturn V - and put up earth-orbiting satellites to dispel
worries about the hazard from micrometeoroids in space. By the end of
1965 all three stages of the Saturn V had been successfully (but
separately) test-fired, and the Manned Spacecraft Center had proved that
the Apollo launch escape system worked, easing some concerns about
aborts on the launch pad.62

Since the status of science in the Apollo program had been nebulous in
1963, the next three years saw substantial progress. Widespread debate
over the goals of manned space flight and the validity of the Apollo
commitment during the summer of 1963 had given the Office of Manned
Space Flight the incentive to accommodate science to some degree in its
programs. The Office of Space Science and Applications took the lead in
creating an office to coordinate the efforts of the two program offices.
The major decisions concerning mission mode and spacecraft had been made
when OMSF's new director, George Mueller, took over in late 1963; he
could therefore direct a good deal of his attention to other matters.
Mueller, unlike his predecessor, was not perceived as hostile to
scientific investigations in manned space flight, although it took some
time for the scientists to decide that he was basically supportive of
their efforts.63

Advice from the scientific community was brought to a clearer focus
between 1962, when the Iowa summer study said little about manned lunar
exploration, and 1965, when the Woods Hole and Falmouth conferences
defined the objectives of lunar science in more specific terms. After
the Woods Hole study posed 15 scientific questions about the moon that
bounded Apollo science, study teams defined the essential experimental
measurements and the instruments with which they would be made.
Additional refinements to these preliminary definitions led to specific
studies for the lunar surface experiments package, which was put under
contract in 1966.

Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center was finally brought around to at
least an acceptance of science by the end of 1966. In the Gemini program
it demonstrated a willingness to incorporate scientific exercises into
its operational missions and worked out a system for assessing the
compatibility of experiments with manned programs. Whether or not these
exercises were scientifically important, they brought the scientists and
the flight planners together so that they might better understand each
other's problems. On its own initiative the Houston center proposed and
undertook to develop a laboratory in which to receive, catalog, and
conduct preliminary scientific examination of the returned lunar
samples. After getting its two spacecraft projects more or less in hand,
MSC assumed the responsibility for directing development of the lunar
surface experiments and then created a directorate in which (it might be
hoped) the center could ultimately develop its own science program. And
finally it yielded to the clamor of the scientific community in picking
its first class of astronauts from the ranks of promising young
scientists. By the end of 1966, in fact, MSC was preparing to select a
second group.

On another front, MSC was cooperating with Headquarters in selecting the
sites where the lunar missions would land. MSC worked with the Apollo
Site Selection Board and Langley's Lunar Orbiter project, supplying its
criteria for landing sites and evaluating the information gleaned from
Surveyor and Lunar Orbiter. As 1966 ended, the list of candidate sites
for the last Lunar Orbiter missions had been considerably narrowed.

At the beginning of 1967 those who wanted to see science become an
integral part of manned space flight could feel that some progress had
been made in three years. Spacecraft engineers and mission planners
could feel that many of their big problems were behind them. In spite of
many problems with the command module, the first manned earth-orbital
mission was only weeks away from launch. On August 26, 1966, spacecraft
012 arrived at Kennedy Space Center to begin a first-article checkout
that would last through the end of the year.64